


How Taehyung Sold Six Tickets on Opening Night

by whoami (davidbowie)



Series: Bangtan Meets the Gaang [6]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 19:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/davidbowie/pseuds/whoami
Summary: Taehyung has been wandering for a long time, but he doesn't quite know what he's looking for.





	How Taehyung Sold Six Tickets on Opening Night

Taehyung had been with the Ember Island Players for two years now, and he knew the rhythm of the troupe by now. There were the actors, prone to come and go with each season; the stressed stage crew, frequently spattered with strange colors and holding entirely too many nails for one person; and the management, somehow always over-budget and frequently recruiting 'volunteers' to go ask for donations from the lords and ladies. Nearly everyone in the entire troupe could be sorted into one of these three categories. Taehyung had spent a few moths as an errand boy for the managers, carrying script edits and updated contracts and bribes back and forth all day without rest, getting to know the patrons and the actors and the crew even as he never truly spent time with any of them. Then, after it became common knowledge that he was an earthbender, he was summarily stolen from the managers in order to work for the stage crew, mostly hauling sandbags. He was also, to the crew's delight, a deft hand with a paintbrush. When he could, he liked to understudy for some of the smaller roles, and when the Players were touring the archipelago, he even got to try his hand a few times onstage. 

"You're pretty talented, Tae Tae," said the stage manager, "but we can't have some complete unknown perform for the crowd at Ember Island. Those are the lords and ladies," she said with a sneer, "who pay top coin to see the most well-known actors perform the best-known plays."

"Wasn't 'The Boy in the Iceberg' written this year?" Taehyung said idly.

She flapped her hand dismissively. "That's nationalism, it's different. But what's not different is the fact that, until you get some good buzz from the smaller shows we do, you can't be on stage at Ember Island. You make a very good Prince Zuko, believe me, but Ji Liang has just come back from his enlistment and he's a crowd favorite. He's who the nobility want to see."

"It's really no problem. Am I backstage, then?"

"We actually need someone at the ticket booth. Try not to talk too much like an Earth Kingdom hick to any paying customers, alright?" She patted his arm distractedly before rushing off to pacify Hui Lu, who was only half in costume and looked ready to scream. Taehyung snagged the bald cap from where it had somehow ended up behind the large vanity and tossed it to the costume hand, who spared him a grateful look.

Taehyung began making his way to the front of the theater, where the ticket booth was, feeling lethargic. The summer months were always the least interesting time to be an Ember Island Player, he thought. During the rest of the year, the troupe toured the entire Fire Nation and even some colonies in the Earth Kingdom, performing at birthday parties and festivals and weddings and all sorts of events. When he had first arrived in the Fire Nation, on the eastern-most island, he had seen a show the Players were doing to celebrate a local town's 200th anniversary. After he had joined the troupe, he was constantly traveling through the nation, meeting all kinds of interesting people, eating interesting food, and learning interesting things. All this ground to a grating halt in the summer, when the Players upheld their name and performed exclusively on Ember Island for all the Lords and Ladies taking their summer vacations.

It was during the summer that he most wanted to be traveling, to make matters worse. Was it nearly three years ago, now, that that Fire Nation raid had wiped out his village in the southern Earth Kingdom? Yes, the three year anniversary would be just after the solstice.

Working as an Ember Island Player allowed him to travel, but another point in their favor was that performers were some of the most open-minded people Taehyung had ever met. They were curious, when he offered to bend the sandbags for the crew, but were ultimately content to let him move their heavier equipment without questions or judgments. It's not that he had some secret or anything. People just didn't seem to understand when he tried to explain why he needed to be in the Fire Nation.

His entire family and all of his friends had died in the raid. The only people who were spared were Taehyung and his brother-in-law, who had been making good on a trade arrangement with another village several days east. They had come back to smoking ruins, with no signs of life in the wreckage. Taehyung hadn't understood. Why did his family, his town, have to die? His brother-in-law had laughed brokenly when Taehyung, only twelve then, had asked. "The Fire Nation are all monsters, Tae. They hurt and kill people just for fun and there's no reason behind it."

This didn't make sense to Taehyung. He had met a lot of people, and they all seemed pretty nice. Good at their core, even if they were sometimes selfish or rude. Was the Fire Nation really so different? The only way to answer this, Taehyung reasoned, was to see for himself. His brother-in-law had let him go with disgust. ("You'd rather live with their murderers than honor their memories? What kind of son treats his family that way?")

Taehyung knew that his brother-in-law was grieving in his own way, just like he knew he couldn't ever really be at peace with his family's deaths without understanding the reason behind them. So he said goodbye to his brother-in-law and set out west; sometimes he joined a caravan, sometimes he walked, and on one memorable occasion he joined a musical group of nomads for two months along the southern coast of the Earth Kingdom. But eventually, with the help of a crab boat returning to the Fire Nation from the colonies for repairs, he made it to the Fire Nation, to look this country of monsters in the face and realize what had brought about his family's deaths.

But life wasn't so simple (and wasn't that always the way?). He found a friendly fishing village, so similar to the one he had been born and raised in but for the colors of the clothes on the fishermen's backs. He met nagging wives and playful children and parents worried for their sons and daughters fighting on the front lines of a war they didn't particularly believe in. He found people, people like those you'd find anywhere in the Earth Kingdom.

Maybe it was just this village of good people, Taehyung thought, and the rest of the country were all monsters. So he made his way to the main town of the island, where he attended a show ("Love Amongst the Dragons" was apparently a beloved national classic) and asked to join the traveling troupe who had performed it. Maybe if he saw more of this country and its people, he'd find the reason his family needed to die. Maybe, in one of the little rice paddy towns or bustling merchant hubs, he'd find the monsters that killed without reason.

It had been more than two years and he still hadn't found them.

Sometimes, he thought the people that they performed for here at Ember Island were the closest he was going to find. These noblemen and women were the ones who supported the Fire Lord, whose uncles and aunts were the Fire Lord's trusted War Councilors, whose families governed the stolen Earth Kingdom lands. But even with all that, Taehyung knew them. Sometimes they were greedy and proud, but ultimately they were good people, who were concerned about their families and who wanted to serve their country. So his answer didn't reside on Ember Island, and he counted down the days until the troupe could begin traveling again.

Taehyung arrived at the ticket booth, to the relief of the stage crew member working there. "Thank Agni, I need to go prep for the show, we're on in half an hour!"

"We never even sell any tickets on opening night on Ember Island," Taehyung said with a grin and he slid behind the counter. "You probably could've just left the booth empty."

"It's the priciple of the thing, Tae Tae. This is Ember Island, you know?" The grip ran off before Taehyung could answer, tugging out a pouch of nails and a hammer as he went.

Taehyung shrugged and turned to face the counter. Most of the audience would be either season ticket holders or people who wanted to appear to be season ticket holders. In either case, they would have bought their tickets well before the troupe had arrived on Ember Island. The only tickets left were for the nosebleed sections, and even those had mostly been sold yeaterday and the day before, to furtive house servants sent by panicking nobility. Buying your tickets to the theater last minute was Not Done on Ember Island, not by anybody who was anybody.

Taehyung had just settled into what should have been a quiet half hour before curtain when a large group walked in with the unmistakable look of theatre-goers. Meaning, of course, that they had a poster for the show and a coin purse in hand. Had they lost their tickets and needed replacements? Taehyung looked at them, mildly baffled.

In the lead was a dark-skinned man about Taehyung's age, with the sides of his head shaved and blue eyes, of all things, walking with a woman with brown hair in a bob. Taehyung began to have an odd feeling. Following the first two were another pair, a girl with similar coloring to the man in front and a boy with a sage's hat covering a bald head. Trailing behind the rest were a a very short girl with gray, unfocused eyes and a man with a hood and a severe burn scar on the left side of his face. On the left side, not the right.

"We need six tickets for 'The Boy in the Iceberg'. Your best seats, please!" said the dark man enthusiastically.

Taehyung couldn't shake the feeling this was all an elaborate prank. "That's…you'd all like to sit together?" The man nodded. The hooded man pushed his way forward to interject. "We'd like to buy out a whole balcony, actually."

Taehyung looked back at the dark man who was, after all, holding the purse. After a brief exchange of significant looks and meaningful gestures, the dark man turned back to face Taehyung. "Yeah, an entire balcony."

Taehyung blinked. "This theater has balconies with eight seats. Why don't I just sell you guys the six you need and hold the other two," he briefly looked towards the bald boy (was that a flash of blue from under his crooked hat?), "free of charge."

"That'd be great! Thanks so much, pal!"

After the tickets and gold peices had changed hands, Taehyung watched the odd group go. As the theater doors swung shut on the last of them, Taehyung very carefully tucked the last two tickets to their balcony into his purse.

It seemed he had gotten too complacent; even Ember Island had plenty of surprises left for him to discover.

**Author's Note:**

> that's all of them (except poor jimin rip)!! taehyung is the only one who actually interacts with the gaang in this whole series lol


End file.
